Last Light in Paradise: Chapter 2

Editors Note:

Every now and then, a story comes along that refuses to stay put. It lingers on your nightstand. It sneaks into conversation. For us, Last Light in Paradise is one of those stories, and we’re delighted to let it loose, one chapter at a time, in the pages of the Montecito Journal. Well, at least the first six chapters for the time being – then you can purchase the book at one of our beloved local bookstores (Chaucer’s, Tecolote, and Godmothers) or from the QR code at the end of the article.

This book marks a first for us… Last Light in Paradise is the inaugural book published by MJ Media Group. Yes, we’re dipping a toe – perhaps a barefoot run – into the world of book publishing, guided entirely by our belief in a novel that is as cinematic as it is soulful, as local as it is timeless.

Set against the luminous backdrop of 1930s Santa Barbara, this is a tale of love and loss, mystery and reckoning, populated by unforgettable characters and infused with the kind of atmosphere that feels both dreamlike and deeply true. We invite you to settle in, turn the page, and join us at the edge of paradise… just as the light begins to change.

CHAPTER 2

The body without a head lay in the wet sand of a Montecito beach. It lay as the tides had apparently delivered it – jackknifed between large boulders, below the high bluffs and the big villa on top that claimed a quarter mile of beach above mean tide.

The body had on pants, but no shirt, and no shoes. A grotesque thing, Creek thought, a nearly naked dead body with nothing but a disinterested cop smoking a cigarette twenty yards off not even watching over it.

The cop merely cocked his thumb when Creek introduced himself as a proxy for John Penbrook. Creek let the man’s indifference go and followed the dozen shoe prints that made a trail to the body. He circled it, then reversed back along the same path and up to the road. No prints ventured out to the beach. They had apparently accorded the dead man enough professional interest to look at him, determine his identity, make a call, and then, per John’s request, leave the body where it lay, calling it a boating accident and not interesting enough to investigate. Maybe they felt, as Creek did, that John didn’t want the body handled by strangers or taken away, but brought straight home.

Creek returned to the body, leaned over, and rolled it slightly to see the tattoo, then let the hardening corpse fall back into position. He patted the pants pockets, but they were empty. He studied the body for a while, the surroundings, then stood and walked back to the policeman. He was a young man, gaunt in his ill-fitting blues. Judging by the scatter of flicked cigarette butts, he was trying hard not to show how cold he was.

“Where is Wade?” Creek asked. “He was supposed to be here.”

“Well, he ain’t.” He looked away as Creek studied him.

“Well now, smart boy, that might be the reason I asked.”

“We been waiting for you. Out here in the cold wind. Couple of fuckin’ hours already. More ’n a couple of hours.”

Creek walked closer to him. 

“I’m touched. And where’s that ambulance?”

“Look, mister, I came on after everybody left, after the undersheriff took off. They said, ‘Leave the Indian till the Penbrook fella comes, which he still ain’t done, then tell him to make the call, and we’ll come and drive it out of here.’ Nobody wants this shit on a beach in a town like this, believe me. Wade more ’n anybody.”

“And nobody’s found the boat?” Creek asked. 

“What boat?” 

“And nobody’s found the head?” 

The man was confused. He looked over at the body as if for the first time. From where he sat, he could not see all of it. “What head?”

“He’s missing a head. You didn’t know.”

“Jesus. They didn’t tell me.” He took a drag on his cigarette and flicked it to the wind.

“But they told you he was Indian,” Creek said. “They tell you his name was Charlie Russell, or ‘Pony,’ for short? Or that he was solid and good in every way a man can be?”

“No. I didn’t know that.”

“No,” Creek said. “They probably don’t tell you too much, do they? If they did, they’d tell you to get off your bony ass and go make that phone call. Tell your chief to get down here. And bring the body wagon. Fools didn’t even cover the poor man.”

“You know, mister, that you’re talking to a police officer.”

“No, son, I’m talking to a shirker. If you were a cop, you’d be protecting him and not the man who stole his head. Now go make that call.”

“Jesus. You think he’s been … murdered?” The boy said it like he had a rank taste on his tongue.

“Make the call. When you come back, don’t go near the body. Place is already dirty as a cow pasture.”

Like most people, when Creek’s voice showed his disgust, the violence poorly hidden behind the words, the man complied and walked up to his car.

Creek turned to the beach, looking for any signs that hadn’t faded from rain or sea. The surf was dead low. There was nobody up the coast or down and nobody on the road. Low tide meant it was roughly six hours since the body floated to where it lay, or to a prior high mark a day back. The sky was swollen and brooding, filled with distant lightning that came and went without sound. The wind was rising, and Creek hoped they would come with an ambulance before the storm broke. He walked back to the dead man.

The body looked to have a few days’ bloat, the skin leached of enough color to suggest a few days in water. The elaborate block of ink work on the lower back was a nice piece of artwork, a wolf howling at the moon, but it was a poor replica of Creek’s own.

Creek leaned down and began a deeper examination of the body. The head had been severed from the body mid-neck, the remaining rim of flesh appeared half chewed, half clean cut. There were marks that might have come from a thin wire or teeth or a rough blade. Maybe the teeth, he thought, of a big cat or a shark or an extra-large animal trap. The flesh was serrated, but not ripped. The fundamental cut was uniform, and he wasn’t sure if a shark or a lion could rip it apart so evenly. If wire had sliced him, no struggle had left a broader path of hematoma. And if teeth had chewed him, there didn’t seem to be chop marks on the vertebrae.

There were bruises about the body, across his shoulders and back and right leg. Creek would save an undressing for later, but what he could see were oddly shaped bruise welts, about the size of the narrow edge of a brick. Someone or something had struck him. Hard. Two larger blood pools that crossed his back and rib cage pointed to violent concussion. Maybe he had been snagged on a mast wire, swung wide from pitch or struggle, and then slammed against the rail or hull or cabin before the garroting.

Pony’s nails were dark and dirty. His feet and hands were creased and lined, deeply, from sun and salt, the grooves of finger- and footprints exaggerated rather than reduced from swelling. If he had fought his noose or chokehold, his hands didn’t show it. Maybe he was struck unconscious, the blow and the lashing coming at the same time, his body taken limp and compliant, making the severing painless.

If not accidental, why was the head taken? An act of ritual? Of appropriation? Of blinding rage? Maybe staged? Without the head there was no identity and no way to examine the mouth or teeth or eye capillaries or skull. It would not be easy to find signs of drugs, weapons, or bullets without the head.

In the traffic jam of sand prints there were no signs of dragging or scuffle. No blood on the rocks.

Creek looked out to sea. It had to have been a fishing accident. Every reason a man might lose his head out there. John was right: a fishing boat was just a basket full of wires and knife edges, unexpected lurches and fogs, an unpredictable collection of sudden and often fatal dangers. The fishermen worked close this side of the islands for abalone, lobster, bass, shark, lingcod; worked deeper waters for swordfish, blue fin, bonito. The shore work was one- and two-man work. The bigger boats stayed farther out. The body was only few days, at most, in water. Longer and the flesh would have begun to float off muscle. If it was an accident, he must have been alone. But what the hell was Pony up to? He hated the water.

Creek barely heard the men above the roar of wind and wave. They came down the path and onto the beach. He figured the large one to be Wade, the three others his deputies. A large crowd for a late Sunday afternoon outing from a small precinct.

Sheriff John Wade had a sour look, like Creek had interrupted more than his dinner. He stood, fists to his hips, motorcycle boots planted wide. His voice had a Southern inclination, and Creek knew from the first words it would not go well between them.

Wade said, “Wish John had let me know he wasn’t planning on coming down here, like he said, I’d of packed up this eyesore this morning. Damn fisherman’s folly, and four of us coming out here at Sunday suppertime.”

Creek sorted through a number of replies, then said, “Nobody wants to look at a floater and never when it’s somebody you loved.” He had turned away from the fat man and out to sea.

“Yeah, there’s that,” Wade said. “Still not real sure why he sent you, but if it’s all the same, we gonna get that thing off this beach.” He looked up at the high bluffs, at the tease of a villa visible through trees, then back at his posse and said, “Boys, bag it up.”

“Hold up there a minute.” Creek said it to the men behind Wade. Wade was too surprised to object, but his shock was fast turning into something meaner.

“You’re calling it an accident,” Creek said to Wade. “I see nobody’s been up the beach or down it. I see no boat, no head, no rigging. So, calling the death of John Penbrook’s ranch hand an accident, is that you being clairvoyant or just lazy?”

Wade looked up at the villa above the bluffs, then at his watch, then back at Creek.

“Well. Ain’t you a sassy fella,” he said at last. Creek heard the vowels get fatter and longer as the Southern leaked out with Wade’s anger. Creek figured Alabama.

Creek said, “If you’re going to call it an accident, you need to make it plausible. You owe Penbrook that, if not this Indian.”

“You’re Creek something, right?” Wade said.

Creek nodded.

“Creek …” Wade waited for a last name.

Creek nodded again.

“First off, Mister Creek whatever-your-last-name-is, I don’t ‘need’ to do jack shit. You want a favor, say it like you’s askin’ a favor. Second off, Penbrook’s just another Yankee rancher I barely know. Not some darlin’ cousin. Further – ”

“It’s not a favor. It’s your job. What taxpayers pay you to do. And John isn’t Yankee, he’s American. But I am sorry for your loss.”

“The Indian means nothing to me.”

“I meant the war.”

“The war.”

“Civil War. Been seventy years. You’d think a redneck inbred might forget there even was a war, let alone who won it. You people hug that long lost shadow like it was your mama. A man of color just isn’t human to you, is he?”

Creek could see intelligence in Wade’s eyes and some decency. He watched as the sheriff scanned the beach, the sky, the storm, then came to rest on Creek.

Wade said, “It’s a resort town, buddy, for some very old money. They pay me to keep it holy as a church. And I do that. So, I like everybody to know who they are and who they are not. The junkies and the hillbillies and the overly ambitious? I have no love for criminals, so I beat them right out of their little scams and right the fuck out of my employers’ pretty seaside honeycomb. You and the islander wish to find the head that belongs to this body, then go about it. But don’t ever think that because you were somebody’s snoop in the army in ‘Frogland’ France, you are more than a farmer with a few acres of shitty dirt this side of the Atlantic.” He turned to his men and tipped his head toward the cars. “Get that damn carcass off this woman’s beach, and we’re done.”

He turned away, and Creek let him waddle off through the damp sand. Creek was a tall man, and rangy; his strength was always underestimated because he was easy in his skin.

“You take another step on my field of investigation, and I’ll put a bullet in your ass. You’ll waddle worse than you do now.”

Wade stopped. His shoulders climbed up his neck. He turned, dumbstruck. “I’ll be damned,” he said.

His men didn’t know what to do. One put his hand near his holstered gun.

Creek closed the distance. “Stand down, son.” Creek said it to the confused deputy.

The sheriff started to speak but stopped when Creek held out his open wallet, the brass badge a foot from Wade’s eyes.

“This badge means you just became second fiddle, fat man,” Creek said. “And this … ,” Creek pulled and planted beneath Wade’s nose his hand-forged sixteen-inch Buntline .45, “is my way of politely saying you need to honor Charlie Russell with a few minutes of honest cop work.” He held it there a long few seconds, then lowered the gun. “I report to the adjutant secretary of the Army,” said Creek, “who reports to the president of the United States of America. A foreigner, a red, on our shores, maybe a spy, makes you legally bound to my jurisdiction.”

“Red my ass. He’s just a dead Indian. Penbrook’s cook, Christ’s sake,” Wade said.

“He’s a spy till I say he isn’t.”

“What do you want?” Wade said.

“First, you will stop clopping all over this field of evidence. Second, one of you will walk a mile east, next man a mile west, looking for any sign of how this boy died and how he got here. Do your damn job, and you can take his body off your precious beach and give him an honest autopsy.”

Nobody moved.

“Autopsy?!” Wade said. “Everything about this says it’s an accident. The boat will show up, so will the head.”

“Most likely is,” Creek said. “But that will be a conclusion based on proof. Not presumption. I am only forgiving the first time a man does stupid. You disrespect me again, and I’ll use this badge to slap you with a court summons.”

The deputies looked at the two men. One finally spoke to Wade.

“I read about him, sir. He’s legit. An army investigator.”

“A hero, boss. Of the war,” said another.

“That’s a bold gun, man, and some barrel,” the gaunt one added. 

“Hush up, women,” Wade said. He looked over at Creek.

“These are hard times,” Wade said. “This is an unlucky circumstance. I’d try real hard not to make it any unluckier than it needs to be. He’s just a dead Indian. Make it any more than that and you’re upsetting more applecarts than you might wish.” He banked his anger, turned, and walked back to his car.

The men watched Wade leave like confused fledglings, but only the gaunt one who had stood watch made to follow.

“Go ahead, son. Go get the cold out of you,” Creek said, and the boy turned and followed Wade. Creek looked up at the villa just visible through trees above the high bluff. “Tell me about that, up there,” Creek said.

“The old iron baron’s mansion. Senator Starbuck, from Montana. Only the daughter left, and she don’t leave the upstairs.” It was the deputy with the likable face.

“Can’t face daylight,” one of them said.

“What’s that mean?” Creek asked.

“Don’t leave the house,” another one said.

“Ain’t at all ugly, either. For a shut-in.”

“An heiress. Was a famous debutante.”

“And the bungalow,” Creek asked. “That belong to her?” He was looking at a small cottage just above the dunes, a hundred yards down the beach.

“Yes, sir. I believe it does. She owns clear down to the cemetery.”

“What are your names?” Creek asked.

The deputy said, “This is Horton, sir, and Jay, and I’m Billy.”

“We’re looking for anything might tell us a story,” Creek said. “Parts of a boat or its rigging. Unusual footprints. A weapon. It may be the head wasn’t wire-cut but chewed. Or struck, then severed. You two, walk up a good ways and back – see what you can see. And be vigilant. A boat tossed sideways can spill all kinds of debris and might tell us something important. Billy, you hang with me.”

Horton and Jay walked off while Creek and Billy walked down to the hard, wet flats to gain a better view. The gray of dusk was turning to charcoal, and the squall line was overhead and looked ready to burst. He saw how the big mansion was set far back on its perch, enclosed by Monterey cypress and palms. Two south-facing wings jutted out so that each had views facing down the coast toward sunrise, and upcoast toward sundown. The villa was a big, faded-pink French monolith, twenty windows wide and three stories tall. If it was the one he’d heard about, it was famously private and famously coveted as the preeminent trophy by every wealthy Midwesterner who moved to town.

Lightning branched and crackled behind them, and in the ghost white, Creek saw someone move behind one of the windows, a woman. There was rolling thunder and a curtain fell back into place.

“You see that?” Creek said.

“See what, sir?”

“The window.”

“No, sir. I was lookin’ for ditches, case that lightning comes any closer.”

Creek smiled. An honest man. He waited for another flash, wondering if the old shut-in had watched as Pony was caught up and rolled over by the waves, slopped about in the tide flush, and finally left lifeless among the rocks.

“Who called it in?” Creek asked.

“The tip,” Billy said, “came from a beachcomber, an old woman, Jenny Primmons. She was down here walking her dog. The seagulls and crows were crowding around what she thought to be a seal but wasn’t. But she’s a good woman; she drove to a phone booth in town and made the call. Six a.m. Wade knew who it was right off. From the tattoo. He’s a better man than he seems, sir. He called Mister Penbrook and agreed to leave things till he could come across and see for himself and then take him back over.”

Creek nodded and started back up to the body, and Billy followed. Creek knew that nobody in this postcard town wanted this kind of news, but was it an accident that a headless Indian had appeared, of all places, upon this private beachfront?

In his second year of service, after the ambulance corps, when he was still green at investigating, Creek had seen how some of the wealthy Americans behaved while safely behind the lines, abandoning their pregnant women or overdosed buddies or car wrecks for others to fix as they slinked off behind bankrolled alibis. So, why was this odd recluse in the high window still peering down at the dead body?

Billy said, “You know, some of these boys love to gamble. Some get rowdy and do stupid stuff; the others, well, most of ’em are quiet and private as dolls.”

Creek smiled. He saw that Billy could not hide his frank love of the truth, nor his admiration for Creek. Billy wanted to be a policeman, and he wanted to do right. But he was hamstrung by loyalties.

“Can I call you if I need to? Without it showing up in the Herald Tribune?” Creek asked.

“I’d be honored, sir. Between us.”

Creek stared down at the body.

“Officer Billy,” Creek said, “can you case the harbor, see if any boat went missing or got rented or bought over the last week or two?”

“Absolutely, sir. Today, sir?”

“Not in this. Tomorrow’s fine. Well, then … ,” Creek said.

“Sir, the thing with the chief – you just angry or you really think this might be a crime?”

Creek hesitated. The head was missing, the pockets were empty, the man hated the sea, and as of yet, no boat had come ashore.

“Well, I suspect the tides will bring us the rest of him, in time, and it will probably add up to a man who had no business being out there, good weather or bad. It’ll be a tall bridge or high mast, probably not a sailboat. Even with thin wire it’s a long fall to produce a cut that severe. He had a bad left arm, Billy. And a gimp leg. And he nearly drowned at sea as a boy on a day when his parents did drown. I can’t tell what killed him yet, but the last thing I’d have imagined Pony doing is buying a damn boat and going to sea.”

“You made all that from the body, from just looking?”

“No. We have some history.” As he said it, Creek turned to see the deputies returned from their beachcombing. One held an old cowboy boot.

“Found this. Only one. It’s soaked.”

Creek took it. He knew it to be Pony’s but didn’t wish to say that yet.

“How far down?” he asked.

“Hell. Quarter mile. Rode the surf to the dunes. Found it by the dunes.”

“Nice work. Thanks.”

A canon rumbled skyward, and they all looked as the blackened skies bloomed light, then burst as the wind and rain came suddenly and with a fury.

The ambulance and gurney arrived, and the four of them collected the body, placed it in a canvas bag, walked it up, and slid it into the wagon. Soaking wet, the men climbed in after the corpse. Creek leaned in and said he’d swing by the station tomorrow, reminding Billy to ask the mortician for high magnification to get a better look at any grooves on the dead man’s vertebrae. He slapped the wet fender and they drove off.

Holding the wet boot in the downpour, Creek stood for a final moment and studied the beach, trying to imagine the drag path of the body from the tide. There were many exposed boulders, some pressure-wedged together, some hollowed into tunnels from years of water whorl. A bloom of white came from above the mountains, then the rumble. But he had seen a glint of light, like shiny metal, wink in the distance.

It took him only minutes to find the wire strands, twisted like silver snakes within the sand and shallow water pool beneath two boulders. He knelt in and pulled it free. It was boat rigging. It was thin-gauge, not thick enough to be spool wire for a trawler net, and too thin and sharp to be stanchion, more like repair wire. He looked but found no cleats or fasteners, no screws or eyelets nearby.

But there was a frayed end, and encrusted within the braid was blood. It was hardened enough within the troughs of ravel to have survived the passage through water. It was dispersed slightly across the six feet or so of length. Had it hardened prior to landing in the sea? Had it snagged, then freed? Had it been left hanging long enough for it to set up?

He continued to walk the beach but found no more debris. If busted up, the boat might have come to rest miles from here. It might still be drifting, or it might have sunk. And what the hell was Pony doing wearing boots, on a boat, even if he only ever wore boots?

Creek walked up to his Ford, got in, and toweled his head dry, then curled the wire into the towel and placed it on the seat. He rolled the window down and stared out to sea. He was thinking that he was making a mistake. Even agreeing to come and look. Because if you went against your deepest conviction, if you flip-flopped on your own vows, what you had left was the man you used to be. That wasn’t what he wished to be in this start-over life.

But this was Pony. Humped up, headless, and half naked, alone and forgotten as a dog, left sunk in sand and seawater for most of a full day, no matter that a mansion the size of Fort Knox looked down upon him and not a soul had come down to inquire.

Creek felt the burn rising and then the urge to wretch. Or put his fist into a stone. He had wanted to put the gun load into Wade’s fat, bigoted ass, drag him wailing back down to Pony, make him kneel and beg the humblest man Creek had ever known for forgiveness for not covering his body.

Creek rolled his window up and fired up the old block. As he pulled out and headed home to tell John his findings, he knew the tide was rising and with it, diminishing odds of finding more evidence. Exactly the point, he thought: the erosion of drawn lines and with them, lost truth.  

Read Chapter Three of Last Light in Paradise here.